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INTERNAL RESEARCH GRANT REPORT
CHARLEY PRIDE’S THIS BED’S NOT BIG ENOUGH
IN SEARCH OF MARITAL TRUE LOVE: SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
DISUSUN OLEH:
IDHA NURHAMIDAH, S.S, M.HUM KETUA NIDN: 0605038102
DIYAH FITRI WULANDARI, S.S, M.Hum ANGGOTA NIDN: 0618028701
Dr. SUGENG PURWANTO, MA ANGGOTA NIDN: 0619015901
FAKULTAS BAHASA DAN ILMU KOMUNIKASI UNIVERSITAS ISLAM SULTAN AGUNG
APRIL 2019
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
COVER I
VALIDATION II
TABLEOFCONTENT III
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IV
CHAPTERI:BACKGROUDTOTHESTUDY 1
Problem Formulation 1
Objective of the Study 1
Urgency of the Study 2
CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE 3
State of the Arts 3
Road Map 3
Song Lyrics Discussed 3
From Country Song Lyrics to Discourse Formation 4 Macro Analysis in Systemic Functional Perspective 5
CHAPTER III: METHOD 8
Type of and Approach to the Study 8
Data Collection and Analysis 8
Flowchart 9
CHAPTER IV: FINDING AND DISCUSSION 10
REFERENCES 23
ATTACHMENT: SURAT PERNYATAAN KETUA 24
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Song lyrics have been objects of study for quite some time as the findings are known to have significantly contributed to give solutions to social problems. The current study aims at investigating the struggle of Charley Pride through his song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough’ in search of marital true love. It has been somehow publicly known that within the first five years of marriage, a couple may be haunted by the memory of ex-girl or boyfriend. Things may go even worst when the memories linger in bed, calling his or her ex’s name on sexual encounters. This really hurts, and may end in divorce, depending on the decision of the counterpart.
As an exploratory and interpretative research, the song lyric was analyzed employing systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in order to construe the meaning of the song. It was tentatively assumed that the song lyric under study managed to create a particular discursive practice that most people would experience when encountered in the same situational context. Solution might vary from one individual to another pertinent to one’s social and educational background. To further confirm the research findings, a survey to twenty husbands of various social strata was conducted to reveal their attitude- moral values and judgments on both implicit and explicit intentions of the song lyric. Simple proportional statistics was used to gain access to significant choices of the respondents with regard to the subject matter. The current research was of high urgency to be conducted in response to high tendency of such marital cheatings in this era of industrial revolution 4.0 by offering possible solution on the basis of social norms and Islamic values.
The findings were interpretatively discussed to relate them to social and religious domains of contemporary contexts in order to arrive at a firmed stance of opinion for the team of researchers to offer recommendations toward possible improvement of marital lives. Finally, the overall research activities would be reported in a scientific article to be submitted to an accredited journal of at least Sinta 2.
Keywords: systemic functional highlights, discursive practice, marital true love, discourse
1 CHAPTER I
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
A country song is mostly related to social, religious and individual affairs of life with a more focus on everyday setting. The lyric is also quite distinctive as compared to that of ‘pop’ or any other musical genre. As the name suggests (country), it is in this particular music genre that people may reflect their lives. Imageries will soon be formed upon listening to a country song with all possible life-related problems that a country music implies. The context of situation can beautifully-narrated, alluring the listeners to certain stage of consciousness with respect to individual domain of reflection. At one time or another, even words lose their powers to describe the beauty of a country song or music.
With respect to research, song (lyrics) is mostly examined in terms of literary language use. Lestari (2017), for example, examined metaphors in the song lyrics of Greenday in which all types of metaphors were used with ontological metaphors as the most dominantly employed. Messages of Maher’s song lyrics ‘Insyaallah’ were also investigated (Arifiyanto, 2013) to find out how Moslems are positioned toward God’s destiny. Arifah (2016) investigative the figurative language used in John legend’s five songs, only to conclude that songs are figuratively expressed to comply the ‘beauty’
features to create ‘the pleasure’ for both the singer and the listeners.
Problem Formulation
Pertinent to the above background, the research questions of the current study can be formulated as (1) what discourse is created through the lyric under study?, (2) what linguistic evidences support the arguments in discourse?, and (3) how are words syntactically constructed to achieve the ideational interpersonal, and textual meanings of the lyric toward the field, tenor and mode of the discourse, represented in the thematic development of the stanza in the lyric.
Objective of the Study
The current study aims at investigating the struggle of Charley Pride through his song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough’ in search of marital true love, which can be
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itemized as (1) to investigate the discourse created by the song lyric under study, (2) to identify the linguistic evidence to support the arguments in the discourse formation, and (3) to investigate how words are syntactically constructed to achieve the ideational interpersonal, and textual meanings of the lyric toward the field, tenor and mode of the discourse, represented in the thematic development of the stanza in the lyric.
Urgency of the Study
The current research is of high urgency to be conducted in response to high tendency of such marital cheatings in this era of industrial revolution 4.0 by offering possible solution on the basis of social norms and Islamic values.
3 CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE State of the Arts
The emergence of industrial revolution 4.0 (digital age) has created social problems caused by the use of internet-based social media, such as Facebook, What Sapp, Twitter and many more. To the (team of) researchers’ surprise, such social problems, for example family cheatings can be easily reflected in a song lyric, which will never decay in time. The current research is, therefore, relevant to the state of the arts and of high urgency to be conducted in response to high tendency of such marital cheatings in this era of industrial revolution 4.0 by offering possible solution on the basis of social norms and Islamic values.
Road Map
This current study is inseparable part of research series conducted by the three members.
Song Lyrics Discussed
Academically speaking, song lyrics are somehow similar to poetry in terms of forms.
They differ significantly in one aspect: lyrics to sing while poem to read. One more
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thing is that ‘poetry’ has become a core subject in the department of literature’
(Purwanto & Nurhamidah, 2018); while song lyrics is not, unless possibly in music study program. In the case of poetic study, it was argued that “the students are taught to appreciate, analyze poems based on a standard theory of poetic analysis. In addition, they are also supposed to acknowledge the poet by describing his or her highlighted works in an attempt to better appreciate the poet’s products” (Purwanto & Nurhamidah, 2018). Song lyrics, however, turns otherwise. Only for the student’s final project (thesis) may he or she make use of song lyrics as the research object.
The underlying issue of the current study is that, to the best of the researchers’
knowledge, nowadays students pay less attention to song lyrics as character builder.
They simply listen to the song, enjoy it and the message gone-by. Meanwhile, it is true that lyrics are rich in mega-messages for life betterment. In the past, children were traditionally taught using song lyrics to develop their characters.
In terms of forms, as has been previously touched upon, lyrics and poems are similar. A recent study (Purwanto, 2017) proved that a poem entitled The Hug written by Tess Gallagher was analyzed employing a discourse approach, within functional grammar analytical framework. It is therefore the same analytical framework to analyze a song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough in order to reveal the struggle in search of marital true love.
From Country Song Lyrics to Discourse Formation
The current analysis focuses on discourse formation within a particular discursive and social practice. The content (message) of the lyric was analyzed employing lexico- grammatical framework. In other words, the lyric was described in terms of how words are lexico-grammatically constructed with the generic structure of song lyric, which at one time or another may differ from everyday use of the language. By lexico-grammar, it is actually a combined synergy between lexical items and grammatical features tailored in such a way to achieve the intended explicit and implicit meanings.
In terms of theories, there are quite a number of music genres, of which ‘country music is one. It is famous among young and old people alike. They mostly enjoy the peaceful scenes reflected in or by the music. In other words, on listening to country
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music or songs, people will be drawn into a deep thinking or imagination, and so will the singer, who freely and peacefully expresses his or her imagination.
As a song of country genre, the lyric under study ‘This bed’s Not Big Enough’
was in its heyday sung, as described in (Pride, 2019). Charley Pride is a singer of American country music apart from being musician/guitarist, recording artist, performer and businessman. He rose to fame-to-early mid 1970s as he was in his best performance for RCA Records after Elvis Presley. In short, he was number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs Charts.
In addition, a song lyric can also be analyzed with respect to external disciplines, as literarily termed as ‘extrinsic analysis’, such as psychology, sociology, politics, and many more. Both intrinsic and extrinsic approaches are meant to construe the intended meaning of a piece of song lyric, including the purpose or rationale of the song writer or singer respectively.
It has somehow been touched upon that one approach to analyzing a song lyric is to employ a linguistic analytical framework of Functional grammar—that is a kind of grammar proposed by Halliday’s perspectives of language functionality by means of lexico-grammar analytical framework. In other words, this study will employ functional grammar analytical framework to analyze a piece of song lyric. It has been theorized (Halliday, Matthiessen, & Halliday, 2014) that language is used to make meanings—
ideationally, interpersonally and textually. In the analysis of ideational meaning, as (Purwanto & Nurhamidah, 2018) put it, the focus is on transitivity and circumstances in response to what is being talked about. Secondly, the interpersonal meaning is construed through the analysis of mood. Finally, the textual meaning deals with the thematic progression of the text.
Macro Analysis in Systemic Functional Perspective
The three analyses of meanings as above are related to the register variables, namely (1) field of the discourse, (2) tenor of the discourse and (3) mode of the discourse. Meanwhile the three domains of meanings (Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual meanings) belong to meta-functions of language. The three meta-functions of language will be, in practice, applied at the same time (simultaneously) during the
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course of speaking or writing. For example, the linguistic form “No Parking” carries three meta-functions, namely (1) the ideational meaning or field of the discourse is a prohibition of car-parking, (2) the interpersonal meaning or tenor of the discourse is that it is a formal notice of non-parking area intended for public consumption—distant relationship between participants (3) the textual meaning or mode of the discourse is that the text was presented in a written form, adopting the standard construction of notice (written announcement—easily understood expressions at phrase level. Such a short form of text (so is a song lyric) can be analyzed in a macro term without parsing into clauses (Purwanto, 2017). Thus the current study employs a macro analysis in systemic functional perspectives due to the fact that the object is a song lyric.
Unlike a macro analysis, in micro analysis, the analyst must go into a micro- details, as described as (1) the text must be segmented into major and minor clauses, (2) each clause must be parsed into words for further analysis, (3) ideational meaning can be known from the analysis of transitivity, consisting of participants, circumstances, and verb process, (4) interpersonal meaning is analyzed in terms of mood and residue in which the mood constitutes subject and the finite verb, and the residue consists of the rest, and (5) Textual meaning is analyzed in terms of the thematic progression of the text in order to arrive at the genre of the text.
It is argued that discourse may utilize the third space to encourage students’
better performance (Ariadi, 2017). His study investigated teaching and learning process reflected in character teacher of Mr McCourt Teacher Man and Mr Keating Dead Poets Society; so that the interconnection was then within those proses in line with educational theory of ‘A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing.’
As previously touched upon, with respect to the approaches to song lyric analysis, The point is that the current study attempts to unfold a song lyric, analytically based on functional grammar in order to define the three poetic meta-functions. Even if it is possible, the beauty of the poem was left untouched with one aim in mind, to describe the lyric in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual entities.
With the knowledge of the three metafictional entities, line by line, the lyric can be unfolded in order to find out the core meaning by mean of which to interpret it for a wider context of comprehension, especially the intended meaning of the lyric
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The ideational meaning of lyric is supposed to produce ‘the content’ (what the lyric is all about. In particular, it is something like the topic or the theme that literary analyst may define. Meanwhile, the interpersonal meaning deals with how the song lyric writer positions the readers in terms of the emotional relations. Furthermore, the textual meaning deals with how the poem is fabricated to cater for the intended meaning. The three meta-functions of language are interwoven to create ‘meaning’ in such a way that the goal of the text (song lyric) is thereby achieved.
8 CHAPTERIII
METHOD Type of and Approach to the Study
The present study belongs to an exploratory research (Suharsimi, 2006) investigating a song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough” sung and written by Charley Pride. Intrinsic or/and extrinsic approach to analyzing a song lyric was not applied as the analytical procedures. Instead, this research made use of functional grammar to construe the three domains of meanings: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The unit of analysis in this study involves lines in the lyric, namely how each line at word level are ideationally, interpersonally and textually constructed. Analysis of each line in the three domains of meaning identified field, tenor and mode of the discourse on the basis of which meanings can be construed.
Data Collection and Analysis
The lyric, as how the data were collected, was actually downloaded from the webpage with easy access (Pride, 2019) on which to click for full comprehension of the lyric. Each line in the lyric was analyzed in a descriptive mode in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual domains of meanings. However, unlike any other form of functional grammar analysis, the current study did not perform parsing of clauses as it did not help interpreting the analysis. Rather, mental parsing (Purwanto, 2017) was be performed to find out the three domains of meanings of the poem in order to arrive at the field, tenor and mode of the discourse.
To further convince the findings, a survey was also be conducted to investigate the attitudes of 20 husbands of various social and educational strata towards the situation of the discursive practice created by the song lyric under study. The survey was analysed employing simple statistics (percentage) to classify the attitudes with respect to choices.
9 Flow Chart
10 CHAPTER IV
FINDINGS AND ISCUSSION (RESEARCH OUTPUT)
A journal article has been submitted for publication to http://e-journal.iain- palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl/author, an accredited Shinta2 Journal with the status of AWAITING ASSIGNMENT:
AWAITING ASSIGNMENT. The article has been scheduled for publication in March 2020.
However, the said article is made available for viewing as follows:
Pride’s This Bed Is Not Big Enough: Struggle for Marital True Love Idha Nurhamidah
[email protected] Universitas Islam Sultan Agung Jl. Raya Kaligawe Km 4 Semarang
Sugeng Purwanto [email protected]
Universitas Stikubank (UNISBANK) Semarang Jl. Tri Lomba Juang No.01 Semarang
Received: ; Accepted: ; Published:
Abstract
The current study was targeted at investigating the struggle of Charley Pride through his song lyrics entitled ‘The Bed’s Nott Big Enough’. It has been known that within the first five years of marriage, a couple may be haunted by the memory of ex-girl or boyfriend. Things may go even worst when the memories linger in bed, calling his or her ex’s name on sexual encounters. This really hurts, and may or may not end in divorce. The song lyrics was analyzed employing systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to construe the meaning of the Vol. x, No. y Month Year
Journal on English as a Foreign Language
http://e-journal.iain-palangkaraya.ac.id/index.php/jefl
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song. It turns out that the song managed to create a discursive practice that most people would experience when encountered in the same situational context. Solution varies from one individual to another pertinent to one’s social and educational background. To further confirm the research findings though supplementary in nature, a survey to 20 male colleagues (husbands) was conducted to reveal their attitude- moral values and judgments on both implicit and explicit intentions of the song. No quantification was performed; the data were qualitatively analyzed. The findings were interpretatively discussed to relate them to social and religious domains in order to arrive at a firmed stance of opinion.
Keywords: lyric, discourse, marriage, moral
How to cite this paper: Name(s). (Year). Title of article. Journal on English as a Foreign Language, x(y), pages. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.23971/jefl.vxxx.xxx DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23971/jefl.vxxx.xxx
A country song is mostly related to social, religious and individual affairs of life with a more focus on everyday setting. The lyric is also quite distinctive as compared to that of ‘pop’ or any other musical genre. As the name suggests (country), it is in this particular music genre that people may reflect their lives.
Imageries will soon be formed upon listening to a country song with all possible life-related problems that a country music implies. The context of situation can beautifully-narrated, alluring the listeners to certain stage of consciousness with respect to individual domain of reflection. At one time or another, even words lose their powers to describe the beauty of a country song or music.
With respect to research, song (lyrics) is mostly examined in terms of literary language use. Lestari (2017), for example, examined metaphors in the song lyrics of Greenday in which all types of metaphors were used with ontological metaphors as the most dominantly employed. Messages of Maher’s song lyrics ‘Insyaallah’ were also investigated (Arifiyanto, 2013) to find out how Moslems are positioned toward God’s destiny. Arifah (2016) investigated the figurative language used in John legend’s five songs, only to conclude that songs are figuratively expressed to comply the ‘beauty’ features to create ‘the pleasure’ for both the singer and the listeners.
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Academically speaking, song lyrics are somehow similar to poetry in terms of forms. They differ significantly in one aspect: lyrics to sing while poem to read. One more thing is that “poetry’ has become a core subject in the department of literature” (Purwanto and Nurhamidah, 2018) while song lyrics is not, unless possibly in music study program. In the case of poetic study, it was argued that “the students are taught to appreciate, analyze poems based on a standard theory of poetic analysis. In addition, they are also supposed to acknowledge the poet by describing his or her highlighted works in an attempt to better appreciate the poet’s products” (Purwanto and Nurhamidah, 2018:162). Song lyrics, however, turns otherwise. Only for the student’s final project (thesis) may he or she make use of song lyrics as the research object.
The current underlying issue of the study is that, as far as the researchers are concerned, until very recently students have not paid serious attention to song lyrics as character builder. They simply listen to the song, enjoy it and the message gone-by. Meanwhile, it is true that lyrics are rich in mega-messages for life betterment. In the past, children were traditionally taught using song lyrics to develop their characters.
In terms of forms, as has been previously touched upon, lyrics and poems are similar. Recently, a study (Purwanto, 2017) has proved that “a poem entitled The Hug written by Tess Gallagher was analyzed employing a discourse approach, within functional grammar analytical framework.” It is therefore the same analytical framework to analyze a song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough in order to reveal the struggle in search of marital true love.
The emphasis of the current study is to focus on formation of discourse within a socially-recognised discursive practice. The content (message) of the lyric was analyzed employing lexico-grammatical framework. In other words, the lyric was described in terms of how words are lexico-grammatically constructed with the generic structure of song lyric, which at one time or another may differ from everyday use of the language (Hajer, 2002). By lexico- grammar, it is actually a combined synergy between lexical items and grammatical features tailored in such a way to achieve the intended explicit and implicit meanings (Holtz, 2011).
Pertinent to the previously-discussed background, the research concentrates on responding to the issues, such as (1) What discourse is created through the lyric under study? (2) What linguistic evidences support the arguments in discursive formation? (3) How are words lexico-grammatically arranged to arrive at the ideational interpersonal, and textual meanings of the
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lyric toward the field, tenor and mode of the discourse, represented in the thematic development of the stanza in the lyric?
In terms of theories, there are quite a number of music genres, of which
‘country music is one (Negus, 2013). It is famous among young and old people alike. They mostly enjoy the peaceful scenes reflected in or by the music. In other words, on listening to country music or songs, people will be drawn into a deep thinking or imagination, and so will the singer, who freely and peacefully expresses his or her imagination (Hays & Minichiello, 2005).
As a song of country genre, the lyric under study ‘This bed’s Not Big Enough’ was in its heyday sung or performed by Charley Pride, as described in (Monk & Bride, 2019). Charley Pride is a singer of American country music apart from being overall music-related dealings and businessman. He rose to fame-to-early mid 1970s as he performed well in entertainment business with RCA Records after Elvis Presley. In short, he was much exposed on the top among the country musician.
In addition, analysing song lyrics can, in practice, also be performed on the basis of external disciplines or literarily referred to as ‘extrinsic analysis’, covering areas, such as psychology, sociology, politics, to mention only few.
These two approaches to literary texts intended to unfold the real meaning of the texts, along with the aim or rationale behind of the text creation.
Nowadays, linguists have taken part in literary text analysis, such as song lyrics by employing an analytical framework derived Functional Grammar or sometimes referred to as EFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics)—a relatively new approach to text analysis under Halliday’s functional perspectives of language.
Similarly, to adopt their attempts, this study made use of SFL as the analytical framework to deal with a song lyric. Theoretically speaking (Halliday et al., 2014), people use language to create meanings in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual domains as suggested in (Fata, 2018). The ideational meaning, as Purwanto and Nurhamidah (2018) put it, is construed focusing on transitivity and circumstances in response to the discourse contents (subject of talk). Secondly, the interpersonal meaning is construed through the MOOD analysis. Finally, the textual meaning is concerned with the thematic progression of the text to label if a text is, for example, written or spoken.
The three domains of meanings as above are analyzed to find out or relate to three register variables, namely (1) field of the discourse, (2) tenor of the discourse and (3) mode of the discourse. Meanwhile the three domains of meanings (Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual meanings) are actually referred to as language meta-functions, which language users normally use at the same
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time (simultaneously) during the course of speaking or writing. A linguistic form, for example, “No Littering” carries three meta-functions, such as that (1) it is ideationally aimed at prohibiting littering or in other words, the field of the discourse is a prohibition of littering, (2) interpersonally viewed, it is a formal notice of non-littering area intended for public view—distant relationship between participants (3) and finally, textually speaking the mode of the discourse is that the text is created in a written form, according to the standardized form of notice (written announcement—easily comprehensible expressions).
Song lyrics, short forms of text, despite the use of SFL can actually “be analyzed in a macro term without parsing into clauses” (Purwanto, 2017b). It can actually be spotted or understood directly on the first appearance.
However, for longer texts, such as news items, short stories or novel, speeches, the case is quite otherwise. The analyst has to get involved in micro- details, assuming (1) the text must be segmented in terms of major and minor clauses, (2) each clause has be parsed into words for further analytical undertaking, (3) the ideational meaning can be identified from the analysis of transitivity, consisting of participants, circumstances, and verb process, (4) interpersonal meaning is dealt with in terms of MOOD and RESIDUE in which the mood constitutes subject and the finite verb, and the residue itself consists of the rest, and (5) The textual meaning is investigated analyzed in terms of the thematic progression of the text to arrive at the correct genre of the text.
It is argued that discourse may utilize the third space to encourage students’ better performance (Ariadi, 2017). His study investigated teaching and learning process reflected in character teacher of Mr McCourt Teacher Man and Mr Keating Dead Poets Society; so that the interconnection was then within those proses in line with educational theory of ‘A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing.’
As previously touched upon, with respect to the approaches to song lyric analysis, The point is that the current study attempts to unfold a song lyric, analytically based on functional grammar in order to define the three poetic meta-functions. Even if it is possible, the beauty of the poem was left untouched with one aim in mind, to describe the poem in terms of ideational, interpersonal and textual entities.
With the knowledge of the three metafictional entities, line by line, the lyric can be unfolded in order to find out the core meaning by mean of which to interpret it for a wider context of comprehension, especially the intended meaning of the lyric
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The ideational meaning of lyric is supposed to produce ‘the content’
(what the lyric is all about). In particular, it is similar to the topic or the theme that literary analyst may describe. Meanwhile, the interpersonal meaning deals with how the song lyric writer positions the readers in terms of the emotional relations. Furthermore, the textual meaning deals with how the song lyric is fabricated to cater for the purposive meaning. The three meta-functions of language are interwoven to create ‘meaning’ in such a way that the goal of the text (song lyric) is thereby achieved.
METHOD
The current study is referred to as an exploratory research (Suharsimi, 2006) aimed at investigating a song lyric entitled ‘The Bed’s Not Big Enough”
sung and written by Charley Pride (2011). The so-called Intrinsic or/and extrinsic approaches to analyzing a song lyric were not applied as the analytical procedures. Instead, this research employed SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) to unfold “the three domains of meanings: ideational, interpersonal and textual” (Halliday et al., 2014). The unit of analysis in this study consists of lines in the lyric, namely how each line at word level is ideationally, interpersonally and textually constructed. Each line in the three domains of meaning was analysed to identify the field, the tenor and the mode of the discourse on which to construe meanings. The lyric, as how the data was collected, was actually downloaded from the webpage with relatively easy access: (Monk & Bride, 2019) on which to click for full comprehension of the lyric. The analysis of each line in the lyric was performed in a descriptive mode to find out the ideational, interpersonal and textual domains of meanings.
However, unlike any other form of functional grammar analysis, the current study does not perform parsing of clauses as it does not help interpreting the analysis. Rather, “mental parsing” (Purwanto & Nurhamidah, 2018) was performed to find out the three domains of meanings of the song lyric in order to arrive at the field, tenor and mode of the discourse.
A supplementary survey was administered to twenty colleagues (husbands) to investigate how they felt upon confronted with such a situation presented in the song. The survey employed only descriptive findings meant for supplementary supports to the main analysis.
FINDINGS
In Interpersonal perspective, the title of the song lyric “This Bed’s Not Big Enough.” is a negative declaration with the copulative verb “is” and the negative particle “not” to falsify the residue “big enough”. The “bed”
metaphorically symbolizes “marriage manifestation” in a sacred manner. Were
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it only a matter of size (of the bed), there would be one solution—buying a new one of a bigger size; or simply let the husband sleep on the floor upon completion of the “two souls union”. Unfortunately, it is believed that it is not about the bed size that matters. It is evidenced from line 1, stanza 3 which says
“This bed’s not big enough for the three of us.” Thus, the problem is that there are three individuals that have to sleep in one bed. It is more or less about the uneasiness of being three people in one bed—two women, one man or two men, one woman. Were the song sung by a female, it would refer to ‘one man, two women. Polygamy has not been accepted so far in most modern society.
Conversely, it would refer to one woman, two men were it the song sung by a male singer. It is hard to undergo a situation for a man to see the fact that his wife is cheating by having an affair with another man. Charley Pride is male so the second assumption applies. It was also confirmed by the survey that a man (whosoever) would not agree to his wife’s imagery cheating—mentioning someone’s name (not her husband’s) during the course of love-making.
The first stanza of the lyric illustrates as the orientation toward the marital problem. The use of the first and second personal pronouns (I, you) indicates that the singer wants to involve the audience—forming an imagery dialogue although it is normally known that “you” refers to the singer’s wife.
The singer has learned that his wife is still in love with her ex-boyfriend. The clause “Been so many little ways you let me know” shows a clear indication that his wife very often unintentionally signals her love to her ex-boyfriend—supported by other two clauses in the first stanza “He is still on your mind” and “All along I’ve been aware that you still care about him.” The stanza ends in “I’m not blind”
which serves as an irony implying that he has known everything (her imagery affair with her ex-boyfriend). Thus, the first stanza has oriented the audience in the issue of the whole lyric.
The second stanza further illustrates or serves as the rising action in a story, opening up the family problem. His wife cries out softly murmuring the name of her ex-boyfriend during the course of love-making. This is supported by the first line and the second line “But tonight when I reached out for you,” and
“You close your eyes and call me by his name.” It really hurts. It is assumed that the second line is not really uttered. The man thinks out-loud in saying it. Thus, he is talking to himself, all alone despite the interpersonal stance (you, your eyes, me, his name). To his heartbreak, the man cannot stand this way and it is time that he has to tell everything to his wife as revealed in the next line of the second stanza “I think it is time to let you know the way I feel.” implying that he cannot anymore bear the situation. The stanza ends in “Something’s gotta change.” which means he wants his wife to change (her present attitude).
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The third stanza is the climax, saying “This bed’s not big enough for the three of us”. This implies that he cannot have the present situation despite the fact the other man is just in his wife’s imagery feeling. The third man is not really present. He challenges his wife which one to choose. Did she keep calling him by her ex-boyfriend’s name, he would rather end up the marriage in a divorce or separation—supported by the two lines “One of us has got to leave beyond his memory.” and “So make up your mind which one you want to keep. This is a real challenge.
The fourth stanza serves as a flashback of how he seized his wife from her ex-boyfriend as evidently supported by the lines “Oh, I’ve been living in the shadow of love” and “You can’t leave behind.” These two lines force his wife to think back of the past—how difficult it was to seize her for her boyfriend. It was a hard competition. Yet, his wife is still in imagery love with her ex-boyfriend.
The next two lines stress how hard it was to get her from her boyfriend—“I’ve done everything I know to beak his hope.” and “To finally make you mine.” The survey confirmed that if they (the survey subjects) were put in his situation, they would be very angry and probably bring the case to court for a divorce.
The man is in despair as shown in the last stanza which starts with “Now I am wondering if I’ll ever have,” and “The part of you I’ve never had before” which means ‘marital true love’ he has been looking for. It is all up to her to decide.
He is threatening in the last two lines “You brought him to bed with you tonight,”
and “And I won’t take this anymore. The phrase ‘anymore’ at the end of the line clearly means that so far the man has been trying to accept the fact. But then, it turns out that he cannot. In other words patience does have a limit.
Field of the Discourse
In systemic functional perspectives, the field of the discourse (ideational meaning) is clear. The song lyric has managed to create a discourse representing a specific problem in a family. The problem is that the wife betrays her husband’s love by calling him by her ex-boyfriend’s name. This really annoys the husband. He always remembers how difficult it was to get her to be his wife; yet now she is still in love with her ex-boyfriend. Such a discourse is formed by lexico-grammatical engineering to be presented in such a way to share the problem, and at the same time to remind other couples of the possibility of having a similar case. A Special Care, therefore, must be taken to avoid family jeopardy.
In terms of the generic structure, the first stanza functions as the orientation or introduction to the whole story. The background is that the man begins to know the incongruence in the family, assuming that his wife still cares about her ex-boyfriend. The assumption is evidently correct as supported by
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the second stanza in which his wife kept calling her husband by her ex- boyfriend’s name during their romantic encounters. The second stanza serves as the rising action prior to the point of climax in which the husband mentioned that he was unable to live with his wife committing an imagery affair with her ex-boyfriend. This is expressed in one line “the bed’s not big enough for the three of us.” The husband gives his wife a choice which one to choose—him or her ex-boyfriend, who is actually only in her imagination. The song lyric concludes in a flashback of how it was difficult to get her to be his wife. He struggled a lot. But then, he is not happy with the present situation.
Tenor of the Disscourse
The lyric was written interpersonally closed between participants (husband-wife relation) which is also represented as ‘close’ to the audience. The audience (for females) has been positioned as his wife (See the use of the second person singular, “you”). Meanwhile, the audience (for males) has been positioned as witnesses to see how he suffered a lot from his wife’s unromantic attitude. The power relation in the tenor of the discourse is equally and democratically distributed. This can be seen from the solution the husband gives. He, for example, did not directly decide to divorce his wife. Even, he tried to recall his past struggle. It is too invaluable to end the family. He tried to be strong to give a choice. Yet, the song lyric does not give any clue about which choice his wife would take.
Mode of the Discourse
In terms of textual meaning (mode of the discourse), the lyric was written in a poetic style. It can be seen from the generic structure. There are six stanzas to get the whole song lyric to be completed. The stanza was thematically developed in ‘unmarked theme-rheme relations. It is common for a poetic style to have a macro theme in one line and a macro rheme in another line below as illustrated below.
Table 1. Thematic Development of the Stanza Micro Theme Micro Rheme
But tonight when I reached out for you Macro Theme
You close your eyes and call me by
his name Macro Rheme
I think it’s time I let you know the way I feel Macro Theme
Something ‘s gotta change Macro Rheme
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From Table 1, the micro theme ‘But tonight’ asks for a complete issue,
‘when I reached out for you’ as a micro rheme. At the same time, the line ‘But tonight, when I reached out for you serves as a macro theme accompanied by a macro rheme ‘You close your eyes and call me by is name’. Similarly, the micro theme ‘I think it’s time’ asks for a complete issue, ‘I let you know the way I feel’ as a micro rheme. At the same time, the line ‘I think it’s time I let you know the way I feel serves as a macro theme accompanied by a macro rheme ‘Something’s gotta change.
The analysis of thematic development can also be used as a hint on how to read out the song lyric, but is not for the rhythm of the singing. In short, the song lyric is a well-written form of poetry genre to highlight that it is not an essay-like piece of writing.
DISCUSSION
The functional analysis of the song lyric has yielded the facts that a song lyric can develop a particular discursive practice reflecting socially and culturally-based human life. It can be viewed ideationally, interpersonally and textually. Therefore it needs further discussion in order to grasp the real meanings intended for public consumption in an attempt to reflect marital life in general.
Survey in Support of the Findings
A survey (supplementary in nature) administered to twenty colleagues (husbands) with respect to their attitude- moral values and judgments on both implicit and explicit intentions of the song, yields interesting issues. Half of them, when asked if they would be very angry on finding out that their wives were still keeping in touch with ex-boyfriends, said they would, for sure, be angry. Only few would not be angry; even some of them stayed neutral. They might not know what to do. This means that husbands surely do not approve of their wives’ cheating. Meanwhile, most of the survey respondents did not agree if a husband ignored such a situation. This means something has to be done to return to the normal relationship.
Extremely, most of the respondents stayed neutral when asked whether it was OK for a wife to keep memory of her ex-boyfriend on condition that she kept silent (without ever mentioning his name, let alone calling her husband by her ex-boyfriend’s name) during or outside love-making activities. This implies that husbands will not care much for trivial things if he is not told or signaled.
However, they will, for sure, hit the ceiling on knowing that their wives are cheating.
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Most husbands required clarification from their wives in case such a an imagery cheating occurred; few, though stayed neutral as they might do the same—imagining other women or their ex-girlfriends. It is a good thing that most husbands approve of the Islamic rule that for a wife (or a husband) to imagine another man (or woman) when making love with her husband (or his wife) is really forbidden.
Most husbands would be tolerant of such a fact but require their wives leave out such a bad marital behavior. Few of them may keep silent or play safe, especially for those who love their wives so much that they are afraid of losing their wives (divorced or separated). This means that it would be much better if a wife voluntarily changes her behavioral malpractice, and soon to return to the normal life
From the survey findings, the universal truth is that a man is very sensitive on finding out that his wife is still keeping in touch with her boyfriend despite being in imagination, let alone if it is factual. The findings of this study support or are in line with (Jacobson & Gottman, 1998)’s ‘When men batter women, new insights into ending abusive relationship.’ Solutions to such a familial problem vary from one individual to another. Highly-educated men may want their wives to introspect for improvement of their relationship.
Others just stay calm as they may also occasionally do the same things. Still few others may get extremely mad at their wives and possibly heading for an end of everything. By average, men prefer favorable solutions to avoid family destruction.
CONCLUSION
In general, the song lyric is good and contemporary in nature. It was written to reflect a family situation. The husband felt that the family had been jeopardized by the fact that his wife was still in love with her ex-boyfriend (though in her imagination). This is evidently true as she always calls him by her ex-boyfriend’s name. The discourse (field, tenor and mode) is formed through lexico-grammatical engineering by employing a poetic style of writing to convey the message.
Such a country song can be easily popular as it reflects the life of people in general. On listening to the song, a man would, as if, join the sorrow, and may thereby condemn such a wife. Similarly, a woman would regret the situation and wish that it does not happen elsewhere. The most significant part of the analysis is that the intended meaning of the lyric can be fully understood.
The current study, therefore, more or less gives a moral value—something that shall or shall not be done for betterment of marital life ever.
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In response to the content of the song lyric under study, the researchers recommend the following issues:
1. Never let your mind divert from the straight path as guided by the rule of God. It is true that, at one time or another, boredom may attack the family unity. Talking over the problem together for a win- win solution is highly recommended.
2. Talk to a woman with logic since she may be fully-emotional. If a man is also emotional, that would end in disaster.
3. Do not argue with women. They are not to argue with but to sleep with and have fun. Be it believed.
4. Conduct similar studies with a more comprehensive survey, involving a wider range of subjects and using statistical analysis for more precise findings.
REFERENCES
Authors’ Brief CV
Idha Nurhamidah is a lecturer at College of Language and Communication Science, Unissula. She is often assigned to teach discourse analysis, poetry studies, and the four language skills. She graduated from Universitas Diponegoro, majoring in Applied Linguistics.
Sugeng Purwanto is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Faculty of Language and Cultural Studies, Unisbank. His expertise includes discourse studies, systemic functional linguistics, pragmatics and other related disciplines. His doctorate degree in Applied Linguistics is from UNNES and his MA Degree in Applied Linguistics is from Griffith University Australia.
Appendix
THE BED’S NOT BIG ENOUGH Been so many little ways you let me know
He's still on your mind
All along I've been aware that you still care about him I'm not blind
But tonight when I reached out for you You close your eyes and call me by his name
I think it's time I let you know the way I feel
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Something's gotta change
This bed's not big enough for the three of us One of us has got to leave beyond his memory
This bed's not big enough for the three of us So make up your mind which one you want to keep
Oh, we've been living in the shadow of love You can't leave behind
I've done everything I know to break his hope To finally make you mine
Now I'm wondering if I'll ever have The part of you I've never had before You brought him to bed with you tonight
And I won't take this anymore
This bed's not big enough for the three of us One of us has got to leave beyond his memory
This bed's not big enough for the three of us So make up your mind which one you want to keep So make up your mind which one you want to keep
THE BED’S NOT BIG ENOUGH Been so many little ways you let me know
He's still on your mind
All along I've been aware that you still care about him I'm not blind
But tonight when I reached out for you You close your eyes and call me by his name
I think it's time I let you know the way I feel Something's gotta change
This bed's not big enough for the three of us One of us has got to leave beyond his memory
This bed's not big enough for the three of us So make up your mind which one you want to keep
Oh, we've been living in the shadow of love You can't leave behind
I've done everything I know to break his hope To finally make you mine
Now I'm wondering if I'll ever have The part of you I've never had before
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You brought him to bed with you tonight And I won't take this anymore
This bed's not big enough for the three of us One of us has got to leave beyond his memory
This bed's not big enough for the three of us So make up your mind which one you want to keep So make up your mind which one you want to keep
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